a list poem for working-class girls trying to grow up and into themselves

1. It is okay to leave anyone and anything and anyplace that makes you feel like sh*t. It’s hard, but it’s okay. And explaining anything to anyone, unless you want to. Let them wonder.

2. Know who the you are. Not just on some touchy-feely fuzzy pretty-on-the-inside tip, but knowing who you are racially, culturally, in relationship to your sexuality, gender and your class- is a source of your power. You define that for you. Don’t ever let anyone else tell you who you are. This may change in time, as you grow and learn more. That’s okay. Manage any shame or guilt you may feel through acts of accountability.

3. Be accountable for what you do. This means owning up to how you up, just as much as it means owning and defending the contested space you fill. You will up, and only you can seek atonement for this. You will need to defend yourself, and rarely will anyone do that work for you. Acknowledging both your mistakes and your rights is equally important.

4. They will call you crazy. You are a woman. There is no way of going through the world in the moment we live in and not get called crazy by someone, often someone you wish would see you as deeply sane. You are not crazy. The world is crazy. If you are affected by this imbalanced, unjust world, it only proves that you are a sentient being with some sense of empathy.

5. Empathy is built. You need to learn to really listen. This means listening without thinking about how it relates to you, or planning the next thing you are going to say. This means seeing everyone, regardless of who they are, as a human being. You cannot really be a human being unless you regard everyone as such, even your greatest nemeses and the gravest perpetrators. All of our damage comes from somewhere. Yours and everyone else’s. Learn to listen to others. Learn to listen to yourself. Empathy cannot exist without really, deeply listening first.

6. You are going to have moments of unbearable pain. It takes time to learn how to heal yourself. And healing sometimes still leaves scars. Healing is sometimes incomplete. Think of your scars as battle-wounds – evidence of how much wiser you are now- maps of where not to return. Cherish these scars and honor them. There will come times when they are the only reminder of where you have been, and how much you still need to grow.

7. You are going to have moments of unbearable loneliness. You need to learn how to love being with yourself, because ultimately, no one has the potential to love you like you can. It is beautiful to love and be loved, but these are just hints as to how to regard yourself. If you regard yourself highly, and learn to turn loneliness into soothing solitude, you will be capable of giving and receiving truly transformative love.

8. Find something that makes you feel like the world makes sense, even if you can’t justify it intellectually to yourself or anyone else. Personally, if I don’t rock a wall, get up, get laid, get down on a dancefloor, read a good book, write a poem, listen to a mind-blowing record or have a soul-shaking, satisfying conversation at least once a week, the world doesn’t make sense to me and I am unmoored. If I don’t get these things for a month, I become a total, inconsolable, incomprehensible wreck. This wreck can easily snowball into all kinds of self-destruction. Find what works for you and be loyal to it as a loyalty to yourself.

9. The world you live in is sick. This sickness creeps into all of us, and in many it manifests as an inability to love oneself, let alone others. Some of those afflicted with a parasitic strain of this illness will latch onto you as a host. You may believe it is part of your nature to nurture and support endlessly. These people will eat your love whole, and you with it, and leave you as a husk. You can grow again from your husk, but it will be hard, and it takes time and the training of betrayal and heartbreak to learn to trust yourself enough to determine who is worthy of your trust. Do not let anyone ride you. Only walk with those who will walk side by side with you, as an equal.

10. Do not with lovers that don’t prioritize your pleasure. That can look like a lot of different things, and you’re probably still figuring it out. Don’t put up with lovers that don’t give you room to explore, to express, and above all – if a lover is only focused on using you as a vessel to reach their plateau –be out. This doesn’t mean to ignore your partner’s pleasure, but rather to see yours as of equal worth.

11. You are not responsible for the actions of those who hated themselves so much that they hurt you on purpose.

12. Collectivism is a beautiful concept, and something worth constantly striving toward and building. Collectivism has radically changed and challenged unjust structures and institutions. But if you sacrifice your own survival for the benefit of the whole, you will find yourself wringing your hands and questioning the meaning of your life and doubting the worth of others in light of their unabashed self-interest. Find a balance.

13. Do not carry broken people who are not in the process of rebuilding themselves.

14. You are not your job. Your job is simply a paycheck, and you are probably not compensated what you are worth and it is not your fault- you inherited a broken economic system, and you will not be the first generation to fight for your right to live. But you need to fight for your right to live, in solidarity, with those around you who are also struggling.

15. Going to college is an accomplishment. It does not, however, make you better than anyone else. It doesn’t make you essentially more intelligent. You never really make it “out” of the class you came from, and you never really make it “in” to the class you aspired to.

16. If you cannot translate what you have learned from whatever access you’ve had back to wherever you came from, then you have not gained anything- you have changed. Assimilation is a choice. Seek to be a translator. Seek to share your access to those who you may have left behind. Seek to disrupt the structures that taught those of us who gained more access that we are worth more than where we left, and less than what we found ourselves among.

17. Never take validation too deeply to heart. This is especially true of those who came up entrenched in the age of social media. The gaze of hegemony is always on us. Find validation in the ratio between how positively you impact yourself and others versus how you up and hurt others. You will hurt others. Be accountable for this, when you need to be, and always be mindful of how often that happens in relation to those you help grow. None of us can be saints, but we can be salient and sentient.

18. Take your struggle to your community, and find community in those whose struggles intersect. It is only within one another that we will make any sense of this destroyed world and it’s corrupt ideology that we’ve inherited. Fight. Fight. Fight.

19. You are inherently valuable. You have worth. Ask no one for permission.

^^Damn all those censors. You can guess it's f.u.c.k."The Universe is not punishing you or blessing you. The Universe is responding to the vibration you are emitting."

"There are some feelings you will never find words for;

you will learn to name them after the ones who gave them to you."

"Buy a notebook. Write down what you want. Write down what hurts you. Show it to someone you love. Save it for your children. Burn it in your backyard. Either way, go to bed knowing that in some way, those things are out of you."

"I want to bury myself in the cold soil and float around until I sink into the earth. I want all the roots and vines to grow through me and flowers to bloom from my chest. I want my tears to water the soil and give life to the trees above me. I want to lay there forever. And when the earth explodes and I’m floating around in space, I’ll be home."

"Some people are good at being in love. Some people are good at love. Two very different things, I think. Being in love is the romantic part—sex all the time, midday naps in the sheets, the jokes, the laughs, the fun, long conversations with no pauses, overwhelming separation anxiety … Just the best sides of both people, you know? But love begins when the excitement of being in love starts to fade: the stress of life sets in, the butterflies disappear, the sex becomes a chore, the tears, the sadness, the arguments, the cattiness … The worst parts of both people. But if you still want that person by your side through all of those things … that’s when you know—that’s when you know you’re good at love."

"After a while you learn the subtle difference Between holding a hand and chaining a soul, And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning And company doesn’t mean security, And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts And presents aren’t promises, And you begin to accept your defeats With your head up and your eyes open With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child, And you learn to build all your roads on today, Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans, And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight. After a while you learn That even sunshine burns if you get too much. So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. And you learn that you really can endure… That you really are strong, And you really do have worth. And you learn and learn… With every goodbye you learn."

Maybe love is in New York City, already asleep. You are in California, Australia, wide awake. Maybe love is always in the wrong time zone. Maybe love is not ready for you. Maybe you are not ready for love. Maybe love just isn’t the marrying type. Maybe the next time you see love is twenty years after the divorce–love looks older now, but just as beautiful as you remember. Maybe love is only there for a month. Maybe love is there for every firework, every birthday party, every hospital visit.

Maybe love stays. Maybe love can’t. Maybe love shouldn’t.

Love arrives exactly when love is supposed to, and love leaves exactly when love must. When love arrives say, “Welcome, make yourself comfortable.” If love leaves, ask her to leave the door opened behind her. Turn off the music. Listen to the quiet. Whisper, “Thank you for stopping by.

You will stay up on your rooftop until sunlight peels away the husk of the moon, chainsmoking cigarettes and reading Baudelaire, and you will learn that you only ever want to fall in love with someone who will stay up to watch the sun rise with you.

You will fall in love with train rides, and sooner or later you will realize that nowhere seems like home anymore.

A woman will kiss you and you’ll think her lips are two petals rubbing against your mouth.

You will not tell anyone that you liked it. It’s okay. It is beautiful to love humans in a world where love is a metaphor for lust.

You can leave if you want, with only your skin as a carry-on.

All you need is a twenty in your pocket and a bus ticket. All you need is someone on the other end of the map, thinking about the supple curves of your body, to guide you to a home that stretches out for miles and miles on end.

You will lie to everyone you love. They will love you anyways.

One day you’ll wake up and realize that you are too big for your own skin.

Molt. Don’t be afraid.

Your body is a house where the shutters blow in and out against the windowpane.

You are a hurricane-prone area. The glass will break through often.

But it’s okay. I promise.

Remember, a stranger once told you that the breeze here is something worth writing poems about."

My thing used to be, “I can make you like me”. Like, any person, any guy I met, I’d always think, “Ha. I can make you fall for me.” And that was the goal, and I was always..happy when I accomplished that very thing. But, it hurt like heck, when I didn’t. And if you asked me then, I’d tell you I was the most confident girl in the world.

I mean, I have so much to offer, right?

I’m a pretty girl.

I have a great personality.

I’m interesting.

I have great thoughts.

But, that was all an illusion created by the ego.

When you believe you have to show others

how amazing you are,

how special you are,

how valuable you are,

how funny you are,

how pretty you are,

how interesting you,

you’re ultimately trying to prove yourself, right?

If you’re trying to PROVE something, then somewhere in your being, you don’t actually believe you are fully worthy or enough.

Because when you know you’re enough, you know there’s nothing to prove.

That’s the thing beloveds.

There’s nothing to prove.

There’s nothing to compete for.

And when we aim to highlight our worth (external powers), we will always vacillate between superior and inferior roles.

One minute, you’re worth it because you have something (external power) that’s seemingly better than the rest.

But when someone who has WHAT you have, to the degree or MORE than what you have, you feel threatened and less than, and you descend into an inferior feeling.

That’s not the way to live.

The truth is, there’s nothing to prove.

You are enough.

You matter.

Whether someone likes you or not doesn’t validate, alter or bolster your worth.

"Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?" I wish

"We have a natural tendency to assume that a remarkable chemistry between two souls is confirmation that they are meant to be together. In the heat of profound feelings, it seems counter-intuitive to imagine ourselves separate from our beloved. But chemistry and longevity are not natural bedfellows. Just because we feel earth-shatteringly alive with someone doesn’t mean they are supposed to be our …life partner. They may have come for a very different reason - to awaken us, to expand us, to shatter us so wide open that we can never close again. Perhaps they were sent from afar to polish the rough diamond of your soul before vanishing into eternity. Perhaps they just came to give you new eyes. Better we surrender our expectations when the beloved comes. (S)he may just be dropping in for a visit."

Anonymous: How can one be more intune with spirituality?

It’s not about being in tune with spirituality but being more in tune with yourself. Spirituality is about building a relationship with yourself, understanding your worth and purpose, taking care of our mind, body, and spirit, and showing appreciation for your higher power and fellow humans. There are no specific rules or regulations to becoming more spiritual. It varies for everyone. I would suggest researching and reading books that open your mind to who you are and your true purpose. As long as you are open to becoming a spiritual being, everything else will fall into place.

13. Wish to be more like rain than snow. Snow is frigid and hardens. Rain is vulnerable and soft.

14. Look at your veins. They are roots, and your limbs are branches. Your body is a strong tree. Don’t you dare cut it down.

15. Strive to have the humility as the sun. It shines brilliantly every day without needing anyone to notice.

16. Flip through old photos and reminisce about the past, but do not live there. Nothing new happens there.

17. Dust off the fingerprints of any past lover left on your skin. You belong only to yourself.

18. Become the person you’d like to fall in love with.

19. Loving yourself again will be like putting on eyeglasses. The blur will fade and you will see yourself for what you truly are: beautiful.

"

"Never chase love, affection or attention. If it isn’t given freely by another person, it isn’t worth having." I'm guilty of this.

"Stop waiting for friday, for summer, for a boy to fall in love with you. Happiness is achieved when you stop waiting for it and make something of the moment you’re in right now."

"There’s so much more to life than finding someone who will want you, or being sad over someone who doesn’t. There’s a lot of wonderful time to be spent discovering yourself without hoping someone will fall in love with you along the way, and it doesn’t need to be painful or empty. You need to fill yourself up with love. Not anyone else. Become a whole being on your own. Go on adventures, fall asleep in the woods with friends, wander around the city at night, sit in a coffee shop on your own, write on bathroom stalls, leave notes in library books, dress up for yourself, give to others, smile a lot. Do all things with love, but don’t romanticize life like you can’t survive without it. Live for yourself and be happy on your own. It isn’t any less beautiful, I promise."

on a cold winter night, we will sit across each other on the train and at the exact same moment, as if in perfect unison, our eyes will meet. we will smile. we will never speak a word. we will undress each other’s secrets through our eyes. we will be soulmates. i hope we meet again.

"How to love your depressed lover. Last night I thought I kissed the loneliness from out your belly button. I thought I did, but later you sat up, all bones and restless hands, and told me there is a knot in your body that I cannot undo. I never know what to say to these things. “It’s okay.” “Come back to bed.” “Please don’t go away again.” Sometimes you are gone for days at a time and it is all I can do not to call the police, file a missing person’s report, even though you are right there, still sleeping next to me in bed. But your eyes are like an empty house in winter: lights left on to scare away intruders. Except in this case I am the intruder and you are already locked up so tight that no one could possibly jimmy their way in. Last night I thought I gave you a reason not to be so sad when I held your body like a high note and we both trembled from the effort. Some people, though, are sad against all reason, all sensibility, all love. I know better now. I know what to say to the things you admit to me in the dark, all bones and restless hands. “It’s okay.” “You can stay in bed.” “Please come back to me again."

9. The world you live in is sick. This sickness creeps into all of us, and in many it manifests as an inability to love oneself, let alone others. Some of those afflicted with a parasitic strain of this illness will latch onto you as a host. You may believe it is part of your nature to nurture and support endlessly. These people will eat your love whole, and you with it, and leave you as a husk. You can grow again from your husk, but it will be hard, and it takes time and the training of betrayal and heartbreak to learn to trust yourself enough to determine who is worthy of your trust. Do not let anyone ride you. Only walk with those who will walk side by side with you, as an equal.

13. Do not carry broken people who are not in the process of rebuilding themselves.

"1. if you don’t like your name don’t use it 2. scream at the sky, whisper secrets to the ocean, hold hands with clouds. the world is yours if you want it to be 3. do things that make you nervous and let the feeling consume you until you feel scared and alive and want to throw up 4. don’t worry about falling in love 5. pick flowers whenever you see them and leave them wherever you go 6. kiss all the things that make you happy and all the things that make you sad, kiss everything that makes you feel anything 7. weave stars into your clothes and always remember that you came from them and will go back to them again someday 8. never empty your pockets 9. light dead flowers on fire when you’re feeling sad, let their smell fill your lungs and make you forget about life 10. diet coca cola will make your head spin and your throat burn, drink it when you’re feeling like things are going to get bad 11. if a boy with pretty eyes asks you who you are, show him your scars and your freckles and your bruises and let him know that you are alive 12. the best people have electricity running through their veins and around their hearts, let them shock you 13. forget how old you are, it does not matter 14. if something or someone makes you want to run then do it, run until your legs go numb and your heart is about to explode and you forget how to breathe 15. when the world is asleep make the night your friend and you will become invincible 16. get lost in another city and don’t ask for directions 17. cry if you want to, but try not to drown in your tears 18. do not be afraid of the sight of blood or the sound of bones snapping or the smell of hospital beds 19. race the moon while you’re driving until you’re going faster than the speed of light 20. never sit still"

"If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely."

1. Stop faking your orgasms. Society already tells young men that they run the universe - if they can’t turn your into a shooting star then for god’s sake, let them know about it.

2. Once you’ve stopped faking your orgasms, use this newfound honesty throughout the rest of your life - stop ordering coffee you don’t actually like; stop sitting at a desk and allowing people to treat you like sh*t in the hopes that a meek attitude will earn you a promotion (it won’t); stop telling people they can finish your food when you’re not actually done yet. These may seem petty, but they add up, just like every orgasm you didn’t actually get to have.

3. If you wanna dance all night, dance all night. Dance all night even if you have work in the morning. The worst that will happen is you’ll drink RedBull all day and look like a zombie - pass it off as a head cold to the real zombies you work with and flick through the embarrassing photos you’re being tagged in as you pretend to take a sh*t for some peace and quiet. I promise, you’ll remember dancing all night in ten years, not the suspicious way your boss looked at you that morning.

4. If your ass looks big in that, that’s a good thing.

5. You will never be as young as you are this second. Embrace it.

6. Embrace the fact that you’re going to get older. Ask your boyfriend if he will still love you when you’re seventy and your tits are down to your knees. Look forward to this time - seventy year old women are allowed to do pretty much whatever they want, and no-one can stop them. You can carry candy in your bag and not share it with a single soul. You can stay home all day and cross-stitch expletives onto handkerchiefs for your grandchildren and slip them under the table out of sight of the people you raised. You can drink whisky at 10am. Every phase of your life is going to be amazing for different reasons. Embrace that.

7. A lot of people will pretend to love Bukowski. Don’t pretend to love Bukowski if you don’t love Bukowski. It’s overplayed and no-one will mind if you actually like Virginia Andrews instead - the people who do mind are boring.

"I find it so much easier to be creatively free at night. Daytime is for sleeping. Nighttime is the best time for making art. The later at night it gets the further into another world you go."

"Some people are so broken, They get mad at you for being whole."

"Everyone is my teacher. Some I seek. Some I subconsciously attract. Often I learn simply by observing others. Some may be completely unaware that I’m learning from them, yet I bow deeply in gratitude."

"Time decides who you meet in life, your heart decides who you want in your life and your behavior decides who stays in your life."

Did you know, you can quit your job, you can leave university? You aren’t legally required to have a degree, it’s a social pressure and expectation, not the law, and no one is holding a gun to your head. You can sell your house, you can give up your apartment, you can even sell your vehicle, and your things that are mostly unnecessary. You can see the world on a minimum wage salary, despite the persisting myth, you do not need a high paying job. You can leave your friends (if they’re true friends they’ll forgive you, and you’ll still be friends) and make new ones on the road. You can leave your family. You can depart from your hometown, your country, your culture, and everything you know. You can sacrifice. You can give up your $5.00 a cup morning coffee, you can give up air conditioning, frequent consumption of new products. You can give up eating out at restaurants and prepare affordable meals at home, and eat the leftovers too, instead of throwing them away. You can give up cable TV, Internet even.

This list is endless. You can sacrifice climbing up in the hierarchy of careers. You can buck tradition and others’ expectations of you. You can triumph over your fears, by conquering your mind. You can take risks. And most of all, you can travel. You just don’t want it enough. You want a degree or a well-paying job or to stay in your comfort zone more. This is fine, if it’s what your heart desires most, but please don’t envy me and tell me you can’t travel. You’re not in a famine, in a desert, in a third world country, with five malnourished children to feed. You probably live in a first world country.

You have a roof over your head, and food on your plate. You probably own luxuries like a cellphone and a computer. You can afford the $3.00 a night guest houses of India, the $0.10 fresh baked breakfasts of Morocco, because if you can afford to live in a first world country, you can certainly afford to travel in third world countries, you can probably even afford to travel in a first world country. So please say to me, “I want to travel, but other things are more important to me and I’m putting them first”, not, “I’m dying to travel, but I can’t”, because I have yet to have someone say they can’t, who truly can’t.

You can, however, only live once, and for me, the enrichment of the soul that comes from seeing the world is worth more than a degree that could bring me in a bigger paycheck, or material wealth, or pleasing society.

Of course, you must choose for yourself, follow your heart’s truest desires, but know that you can travel, you’re only making excuses for why you can’t. And if it makes any difference, I have never met anyone who has quit their job, left school, given up their life at home, to see the world, and regretted it. None. Only people who have grown old and regretted never traveling, who have regretted focusing too much on money and superficial success, who have realized too late that there is so much more to living than this.

"

You will fall in love with someone who annoys you, whose orgasm face looks and feels pathetic. Despite all of this, there’s something keeping you drawn to them, something that makes you want to protect them from the harsh world. What you fail to realize, however, is that you are the harsh world. You aren’t their noble protector — you are someone to be protected from but it takes a lot of dates, a lot of nights where you question whether or not you are actually a good person, for this to ever resonate with you. When it’s over and whatever love is left is put back in the fridge like a sad plate of leftovers, you will finally understand that you have the power to hurt someone. You can either hurt them or love them and it’s up to you to decide what kind of role you would like to take on in future relationships. What feels more comfortable — being the one who loves more or being the one who’s loved less?

You will fall in love with someone who’s cold and always seemingly pushing you away. When all is said and done, they will be forever known as the one person you couldn’t get to love you. Unfortunately, it will hurt and sting worse than the good ones, the ones that chopped up your meat for you and picked out an eyelash from your eye and were nice to your mother, because love often feels like a game we need to win. And when we lose, when we realize we couldn’t get what we ultimately desired from a person, it makes us feel like a failure and erases all the memories of those who loved us in the past. It’s a permanent smudge on your love resume.

You will fall in love with someone for one night and one night only. They’ll come to you when you need them and be gone in the morning when you don’t. At first, this will make you feel empty and you’ll try to convince yourself that you could’ve loved this person for longer than a night, but you can’t. Some people are just meant to make cameo appearances, some are destined to be a pithy footnote. That’s okay though. Not every person we love has to stick around. Sometimes it’s better to leave while you’re still ahead. Sometimes it’s better to leave before you get unloved.

You will fall in love with the old couple down the street because to you they represent the impossible: a stable, long-lasting love. You’re trying to get someone to like you for more than ten minutes. A monogamous “never get sick of ya” love seems unfathomable. “What’s your secret, sir? Do you just say yes a lot?”

You will fall in love with smells, the good and the bad kind. You will want to wear your lovers shirt because it makes you feel close to them and you’re okay with being that PSYCHO who is legitimately sniffing their shirt in public. You will fall in love with sweat, certain perfumes, the smell of the season in which you fell in love. This particular love smells like fall. It smells like Halloween and a roaring fire and leaves and fog and mist and candy and food and family and whiskey and sex and the lint that collects on sweaters. When it ends, if it ends, you will never experience another fall without thinking of him, her, it. The memories will stick to the ground like a mound of leaves and will only dissipate when the weather drops.

You will fall in love with your friends. Deep, passionate love. You will create a second family with them, a kind of tribe that makes you feel less vulnerable. Sometimes our families can’t love us all the time. Sometimes we’re born into families who don’t know how to love us properly. They do as much as they can but the rest is up to our friends. They can love you all the time, without judgement. At least the good ones can.

This is where I’m supposed to tell you that you will fall in love with The One, a person who isn’t too cold or too nice. Their “O” face is perfectly fine and they’re not afraid to show how much they love you. This person is supposed to wait for us at the end of the twentysomething road as some kind of reward for all the heartache and loneliness. We deserve them. We’ve earned this kind of love.

So fine. You’re going to fall in love with The One. You’re going to fall in love with someone who will make sense beyond college or a job or a particular season. They’ll make sense forever and won’t ever want to leave you behind. I’m telling you this not because it’s true but because it NEEDS to be true. Everyone is entitled to this kind of love, so why not? Have it. It’s yours. Blow out the candles on your 30th birthday, holding their hand, and let out an exhale that’s been waiting for ten years. Do it. Now

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